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Copyright © 1996 by Mike McMillan. Not to be reproduced for profit without the permission of the author.
Much of my philosophy is based on the importance of the ability to decide as a part of what it means to be human. This has broad implications, and particularly for issues of control and censorship by authorities.
I derive my view of the importance of decision from the belief that humans are made in the image of God (in a non-physical sense), and that decision is a central aspect of this image. Other aspects, such as self-consciousness, rationality, the ability to create order and the capacity for relationship are also important, naturally.
Someone without a belief in God may still understand intuitively that making decisions is a central part of what makes us human. Such a person may also accept intuitively that becoming 'more human' or exercising our humanity is good and appropriate (in an intuitively understood sense of these words).
The same intuitive understanding may be able to accept the term 'moral' as referring to the ways in which people relate being good and appropriate or otherwise. It should be understood in this sense throughout the following.
Although it may seem to be pedantry, I insist that a decision made under constraint is still a decision. 'Under constraint' may mean anything from 'this is clearly the better course in light of the factors I have freely weighed' to 'under duress' ('if I don't do this I will be punished'). There is a continuum, and while for some purposes there is a moral difference between constraints imposed by circumstances ('I can't walk any further on this path or I'll fall off a cliff') and constraints imposed by another human agency ('I can't walk any further on this path or I'll be shot'), both are forms of constraint. The key is that there is still a decision to be made. A person who is suicidal, or has some device which makes it safe, may choose to continue over the cliff. In fact, any person may choose to continue over the cliff, but without a convincing factor such as this they will not - they will decide not to. This is the normal way of making decisions (based on known or speculated consequences).
All decisions are thus, to different degrees and in different ways, 'constrained' - if we accept that they take factors into account which influence them in one direction or another. The case of a truly 'equal' decision, when either of two courses is believed to be equally good, is almost always trivial and comparatively rare even so (or we would never be able to decide anything).
A constrained decision, being the normal state of a decision, is not an evil as such. It is something which is 'non-good' - in as neutral a sense as possible. It is not inherently evil, but it is certainly not, in and of itself, inherently good. Its good or evil is determined by the means by which it is constrained and the purpose for which it is constrained.
Forbidding - removing the option to decide - is an act of great moral weight and significance, a particular form of constraint which has a moral dimension. If the ability to decide is an important part of what it means to be human, exercising that ability yourself in order to remove that ability in someone else is not something to be done lightly.
I would not go so far as to say that any act of forbidding automatically reduces the humanity of the person to whom the prohibition applies. Decision is not so very central as that. However, consistent, comprehensive and above all inappropriate forbidding can reach the point of diminishing humanity, particularly when it leads to a reduced capacity to decide. Someone who has not had practice in making good decisions has less ability to make them, by the nature of the judgement-and-decision process. This has two important implications, as follows.
For a child, particularly a small child, forbidding is appropriate even forbidding which to the child appears arbitrary (but which is not). A parent or someone in a similar role (such as an educator) has a moral responsibility to the child to protect, and this is often best achieved by forbidding, particularly in the early stages. Note that the moral responsibility is not only to protect the child. Other children, other adults, and indeed the parent must be 'protected' from inappropriate actions (based on inappropriate decisions) by the child, and the best means initially is an enforced forbidding.
Why is enforced forbidding appropriate for small children, if the ability to decide is so important? Because the ability to decide is not as important as the ability to decide wisely. A small child lacks this ability and will decide unwisely, without appropriate reference to the child's own safety or the good of others. In such circumstances it is appropriate that the child's parent or other responsible person exercises wise decision on behalf of the child, and makes these decisions effective by enforcing them on the child. Note here that the good of a wise decision being made outweighs the non-good of the child's decision being constrained.
A child who is never allowed to decide will not learn to make good decisions. If no decision is ever made by the child, eventually only the parent (or the parent's moral system, imposed upon the child by constant precept and example) will be capable of making decisions for the child. This is the basis of much of the 'Transactional Analysis' theory of psychology originated by Eric Berne. The three aspects of the personality in this model are named parent, adult, child, and given the following characteristics.
The child is irresponsible and unsophisticated, playful, spontaneous and creative.
The parent (made up largely of patterns of behaviour and belief learned from the person's own parent or parents) is restrictive and rule-oriented, responsible and sensible.
The adult has a supervisory role, passing judgement on both the desires of the child and the edicts of the parent and deciding when they are appropriate or inappropriate.
A person using only parent and child aspects of their personality is unable to make 'adult' decisions, and is entirely dependent on the parent (at first the actual person, but after a while the model in their head). Mental health professionals, whatever model or terminology they use, agree that this state of affairs is not healthy.
Without necessarily endorsing the full development of the Transactional Analysis model (by which I do not mean to imply that I reject it either), we can agree with these aspects of the model and use them to illustrate the point that a person who makes none of their own decisions is less healthy (or less fully developed in their humanity) than they ought to be.
Current child-development ideas include the concept of a limited choice to deal with this reality. The child's decision-making ability and confidence is developed by offering choices which are genuine choices but are set within appropriate boundaries. For instance, a child requesting a snack may be asked, 'Do you want an apple, or an orange?' A choice is offered, but other choices are excluded - not only protecting the child but providing an easier decision.
Indeed, we still like limited choices as adults, and in just this arena. Restaurant menus give us options, but not infinite options, not only for the convenience of the restaurant (though this is a strong factor) but for our convenience. Think of the difficulty a party of any size has simply in selecting a restaurant, or even a type of restaurant (Indian, Italian, seafood etc), and you will realise the value of limited choice. In consumer societies such as the USA, where the market is large enough to support many competing brands, the phenomenon of 'overchoice' has been observed. So many options exist that the decision becomes too difficult, and may be made in a comparatively arbitrary way because weighing up all the factors would take more time than it was worth. (The influence of advertising is often an important part of this arbitrary decision.)
To return to our point, if we are not to perpetuate inept deciders, we must allow them some degree of choice, though at first this will be limited. This has important implications for eduction and public life.
In the words of Theodore Roosevelt, "To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society." The great moralist Samuel Johnson expressed much the same thought: "The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things - the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit."
Currently, however, strong prejudice exists against this viewpoint from both ends of the political spectrum.
I do not think I need to defend the assertion that the overall tone of the educational establishment is primarily liberal (and has been since, probably, the Renaissance if not longer). Although there are aspects to it which are profoundly 'conservative' in the sense of preserving the status quo (since it is, after all, a part of that status quo, as are its operators), the thought, if not the practice, of educators in general tends to be 'progressive' (within practical limits, as one finds if one tests them). Currently, the situation is as described by Charles Colson in Against the Night: Living in the New Dark Ages (Hodder, 1990, p 85): "Our educational establishment seeks to instill a passion for intellectual curiosity and openness, but allows for the existence of no truth worth pursuing."
Exploration has always been important to eduction, although limits have always been set upon it in one way or another. The current educational (and liberal) orthodoxy is that 'tolerance' of all viewpoints is important, and this sets exploration's limits: at no point in your exploration must you conclude (judge or decide) that a viewpoint is wrong or bad - except that a viewpoint which contradicts this idea is wrong or bad. This means that orthodox religious viewpoints with definite moral content (not only Christian, but Jewish or Muslim) become unacceptable views by virtue of the fact that they declare some views unacceptable.
It is almost tautologous to say 'orthodox religious viewpoints with definite moral content' in this context. Definite moral content, in some areas at least (particularly sexual morality), is largely if not entirely restricted to orthodox religion. Also, it is not the religion as such, but the moral content, which is objected to. Saying that any behaviour is objectively wrong is stigmatised as 'narrow-minded' and 'prejudiced'.
However, in our broad definition of 'moral' as 'referring to the ways in which people relate being good and appropriate or otherwise', there is a strong moral component to the liberal viewpoint I have in mind - often referred to currently as 'political correctness', though this is a term which is in some ways misleading. This viewpoint, whatever one calls it, holds as a moral absolute (a statement about the goodness of ways in which people interact which is always true without exception) that it is 'wrong' to proclaim moral absolutes. Apart from the absurdity of the position, this has important implications for decision, freedom, and above all responsibility.
The basis of what I am calling 'Decision Education' is the enhancement of the ability both of the individual and of the larger group to make wise and appropriate decisions, for which they take responsibility. The indispensable prerequisites for this are three:
The small child is prevented from making certain decisions because the consequences would be harmful. The older child is offered alternatives which allow safe decision-making. The teenager is given increasing responsibility while retaining access to parental support and guidance. The aim of this process is to produce an independent, competent decision-maker.
Currently, education provides the ability to gain, and the possession of, information. Generations of liberal educators have believed that this is sufficient. It is not. It is essential also to equip decision-makers with the means to evaluate the information and a sense of responsibility for what they do with it. It may, after all, be misinformation or even disinformation (information which is deliberately misleading). It will, regardless of the source, have a slant or bias imposed, even by the most 'objective' reporter. Above all, considered merely as information it will not contain, indeed cannot contain, the means to make a moral judgement without a pre-existing moral standard.
Everyone has moral beliefs - beliefs about the goodness, or otherwise, of ways of human interaction. The greatest self-proclaimed relativist has this in common with the most deep-dyed fundamentalist: that there are ways of being human which they do not believe to be appropriate (for example, each other's ways). To obscure and deny this fact is not only to deceive oneself, but to deprive oneself of conscious access to a tool one uses constantly. Again, mental health professionals, whatever their other differences, would on the whole agree that one cannot work to improve what one is unaware of, or chooses to remain unaware of. Nor is the 'victim mentality' which often accompanies political correctness - in which responsibility for my actions belongs, not to me, but to others or to 'the system' - conducive to mature decision-making. In other words, liberal relativists render themselves morally unimprovable - incapable of effective Decision Education.
This is an extreme statement, and not entirely true. We all learn from experience and disillusionment, and this may be why pure idealistic liberal relativists are very common at universities but comparatively rare outside them, even among university graduates. The reality is that in a world where humans interact in significant ways which produce significant outcomes, the position that the interactions of humans are value-neutral is not tenable for very long as a practical approach. It may continue to be held in theory, of course, long after it has been abandoned in practice. (See my remarks on 'second values' in Symposium 3A.)
Experience and disillusionment, however, are expensive ways to learn. The cheapest way to learn is from the collective wisdom of one's society, both contemporary and historical. This is what many conservatives would claim to be doing, and they also have a great stress on responsibility. Are they, therefore, more capable of benefiting from decision education, or in less need of it?
The problem with conservative positions is that they are attempting to stabilise what is inherently unstable. Change is the natural state of humanity, at least in our century, and to believe otherwise is self-deception.
However, as Samuel Johnson observed in the preface to his Dictionary, the fact that humans inevitably die is no reason not to practice medicine. There can be value in resisting change, if only that of forcing the innovation to prove its worth and bringing about useful refinements in it which it would not have had if unresisted. Any change has its price, and by raising the price, conservatives contribute to a kind of natural selection for innovations. Only the best (in a sense not necessarily moral) survive.
The techniques used to resist change, however, are often unfriendly to Decision Education. I have discussed elsewhere (in Symposium 3A) the means by which beliefs are retained and reinforced. These forces are extraordinarily powerful and form, in effect, a collective parental voice which can stifle the development of adulthood in individuals and groups.
It is believed by many conservatives that the best means to protect the status quo is to discourage exploration and innovation. This discouragement is necessarily active (since exploration, too, is part of human nature). It tends, however, to have the opposite effect, not in all but certainly in many cases.
The Soviet poet Irina Ratushinskaya was a child in the early 1960s, when under Kruschev atheist instruction was compulsory in all schools. According to Charles Colson's The Body (Word, 1992), her process of conversion to Christianity began when she reflected that if God really didn't exist, the instructors wouldn't be so insistent and spend so much time telling you so. An attempt to prevent exploration in a certain direction had backfired, as do many such attempts, particularly when practiced on children against their natural inquisitive nature.
It is notable that many parents who make a great fuss over having no alcohol in the house are subsequently disappointed - often tragically - when their child abuses alcohol. The child has never had the opportunity to learn, from the people best positioned to give the lesson, how to use alcohol responsibly. Furthermore, the child is fascinated by the forbidden, and thinks that it must be something particularly fine to be forbidden so strenuously. After all, something that is unpleasant doesn't need to have such a big deal made about it. All the parent has to say is, "It's not very nice. I don't think you'd like it," and more often than not the child is content with the parent's judgement and may feel no inclination to test it (given a normal level of trust in the relationship). However, if the message is, "It's a terrible thing, you mustn't ever go near it, do you understand?" the child's curiosity is piqued. This is obviously a very important thing, and it is hardwired into humans to want to know as much as they can about important things and take any necessary steps to do so.
"Conservatives often seem afraid of questions and liberals afraid of answers - which is even sillier, because that's like being afraid of food. Being afraid of questions is like being afraid of hunger. That's only cowardice." (Peter Kreeft, Making Sense Out of Suffering, Hodder, 1987, p 188.) Cowardice it is, and perhaps the greatest need for conservatives (indeed, for us all) is to come to a security about their own beliefs. Someone who is insecure in their beliefs will be defensive, and unable to examine alternatives. This is not restricted to conservatives; scratching a liberal often reveals a very defensive, insecure and above all doctrinaire person underneath. But it is endemic to the conservative approach.
Consider: the beliefs of a conservative have usually been formed by a parental process (whether by actual parents or by other persons or groups acting in a similar guiding role). These beliefs are strongly self-reinforcing (by the nature of beliefs), and also take on a 'sacred' character. They are linked at a deep level to the believer's security and sense of place and identity, something received initially from parents by the same process and at the same time as beliefs are transmitted. Disagreement with these beliefs is interpreted as an attack, not just on some abstract point but on the security and sense of place and identity which is such an important part of our emotional landscape. Doubting these beliefs is accompanied by guilt and insecurity.
Only if we can progress to holding our beliefs as adults - perhaps still passionately, but with the ability to re-examine and adapt them - can we attain the full freedom and flexibility to decide responsibly which is our heritage as humans. The fear of conservatives (and, indeed, doctrinaire groups generally) is that the decisions we then make will be 'wrong'. The underlying belief is that 'our collective wisdom is perfect, and you cannot have any worthwhile contribution to it other than to reinforce it. It needs no development.' While correctly identifying the importance of collective wisdom, this ignores the fact that collective wisdom is in a continual state of growth through the contributions (even the erroneous contributions) of new individuals.
A number of fences - jargon and social sanction being among the most significant - are built by various groups to prevent their members making decisions considered inappropriate by the group. The immature reaction to this is to jump over the fence and kick it down from the other side, and it is this reaction which keeps opponents of independent thought fearful (and encourages them to build stronger and higher fences). Paradoxically, this attitude is what creates the threat in the first place. Enemies are made, not born, and a mindset which expects enemies will create enemies (and never reabsorb them). On the other hand, a mindset which makes it clear that you can differ from my belief and not be my enemy - that there is not only a gate, but an unlocked gate which swings both ways will make it more likely that you will come, independently, to agree with me. Perhaps you will never leave in the first place. After all, you know you can and so do not have as great a desire to do so as you would if it were forbidden. (Another metaphor which expresses this well is the story of the Australian farmer who was asked by an overseas visitor how he kept his sheep on his thousands of acres of dry, hot land without fences. He replied, "Here, we don't build fences. We dig wells.")
Of course, this response of not leaving is not guaranteed. This is the frightening aspect. However, indoctrination techniques are far from guaranteed themselves, as experience continually shows - in fact, they are guaranteed to drive away the most creative thinkers from your cause and encourage them to set up, not just as alternatives, but as opponents to your viewpoint.
So why do we still use them? Because they are much, much easier.
It is difficult to teach someone something you don't know yourself. An immature, dependent parent will not, without outside intervention, produce a mature, independent child. (The fact that this does happen shows the power of a wider society to compensate for our weaknesses.)
People prefer rules. Given a sufficiently comprehensive set of rules, and relatively stable circumstances for which the rules are suitable, any reasonably competent person can get on with life with minimal anxiety. However, if we are always having to work out principles in important situations with serious consequences, it is much more difficult. At the same time, I claim, it is nobler, better, more of a fulfillment of our humanity, to be mature deciders, in possession of the facts and taking responsibility for our actions.
In Areopagitica, his tract opposing censorship of the press, John Milton says:
What wisdom can there be to choose, what continence to forbear without the knowledge of evil? He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true warfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for - not without dust and heat. Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary.
In other words, we do not become better, more human, more in the image of God if you accept that viewpoint, by avoiding the difficult decisions. And we do other people no favours - in fact, we commit a moral error by denying them the opportunity to do the same.
At the same time, to give them the opportunity to decide without the support to teach them to decide wisely is irresponsible and likewise immoral. Neither the conservative approach of forbidding and censorship (which prevents maturity) nor the liberal approach of allowing maximum freedom without appropriate responsibility (which foolishly assumes a maturity which does not exist) are appropriate. There is no excuse for protection which is not gradually replaced by education, nor for license which is granted prematurely and without due care. Another, practical option needs to be developed and applied to society, as well as to individuals.
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